Macca the jazzbo

Well, it's been a while. I used to post to this blog when I had a reference desk job in a library and I had a fair amount of time on my hands in front of a computer. Now my library job is in Technical Services, which means I'm not in the public eye, but I'm busy in front of the computer all day long, hence fewer posts here over the past year. I'm still consuming media, but I have less time to think and write about my consumption. So in order to reboot my blog, I'm going to try and write shorter posts.

I'll start with Kisses on the Bottom, the new Paul McCartney album. I love Paul, but he's largely a spent force on the music scene. He gets an album out every few years, there are usually respectable reviews, it hits the charts for a few weeks, then disappears. This new one is a collection of standards, or at least older songs. Some truly are standards ("Bye Bye Blackbird," "It's Only a Paper Moon") and some are songs that are less well-remembered ("Get Yourself Another Fool," a cute novelty song called "My Very Good Friend the Milkman"). He performs them in nightclub-jazz style--subdued vocals, brushes on drums--and he has some musicians with true jazz chops, including Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli, backing him.

But Paul is not a jazz singer, and he strains to sound like one. For most of the album, he sounds like a very old man half-whispering the songs. My first thought was, Oh, poor Paul, he can't sing anymore. But on a handful of songs, including the upbeat "Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive," he sounds like the same old Paul. So I'm guessing on the other songs, he was trying on the "jazz singer in a film noir nightclub" suit. It doesn't fit well. As an experiment, it was fun to listen to once, but the album is not a keeper. The odd title, by the way, comes from a line in "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" about putting XXXs at the bottom of a letter.